OT: Lance Armstrong admission

He finnally admitted to it (According ot the AP), do you feel as if this is the right direction for him to clean his image. Having lost my father in law to cancer and having a parent who just beat cancer, I really think of him as more than just a cyclist, what he did with his fame is far more important to me than what he did on a bicycle.

Lance Armstrong confessed during an interview Monday with Oprah Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

I think the governing body of the sport of cycling even admits to the sport being dirty by refusing to award the titles from his Tour de France wins to any other cyclist (many others from those years have either been caught or admitted to doping, specifically his teammates,, but others as well).

I know that is true. My problem is with his blatant denial and holier than thou attitude while he was an outright sham and false image as a crusader of all that is good. The guy is scum, simple as that.

You can't? After he spent years self-righteously denigrating and tearing down anyone who said the truth about him -- including his own teammates? And his charity, while itself a positive thing, served to make Lance very rich. Lance Armstrong "branded" himself into a hero. And he's only coming clean now because he has no choice. And note how he's still trying to spin things, via Oprah and calculated media leaks about how he "might" come clean. He's pathetic.

All his good work fighting cancer, likely many lives saved, is negated by lying about something everybody in his sport does.

Uh, actually no, not even close. That statement is obviously beyond ridiculous.

Armstrong's human and therefore, flawed. But he's still a hero for beating cancer and helping others do the same. That's far more important than whether he took performance-enhancing drugs and lied about.

It's the same for probably every single person who's done great things in this world.

He didn't just lie about it. He tried to use his position in the sport and in the pelaton to destroy the careers of people that witnessed against him.

Is there any parallel in any sport to what he did to Fillippo Simeoni (well, a parallel that doesn't involve Armstrong himself)? Probably not--there's no other sport where cooperation or its lack is so critical, even among members of different teams, and it's hard to even imagine what a parallel could be. You could maybe imagine some weird alternate universe where Bonds or Clemens or somebody made threats against an accuser and convinced players on other teams to spit on the guy as he ran the bases, but it's hard to imagine how they could do real damage to the ability of that accuser to even compete. Maybe if every pitcher in the league went headhunting against him on every trip to the plate and all the umpires refused to acknowledge or penalize it.

again, his wrongs are still outweighed by his contributions to fighting cancer. It's all about perspective. I get a very healthy dose of perspective every day dealing with life and death and suffering. I think anybody who places more importance on the negative here is seriously lacking that perspective.

It's not at all clear to me that his net contribution to fighting cancer was even positive. What good was done by a branding and marketing campaign whose only real purpose was to convince people to donate money to the campaign, money that would be spent on ever more branding and marketing to snowball the donations? Were there really that many people that didn't realize cancer was a serious problem until Livestrong brought them into the light?

I suppose the placebo effect on cancer patients who thought that all the countless people wearing bracelets had donated hundreds of millions of dollars that had been put toward researching their disease was a positive boon--there's been plenty of testimony to that effect here. But if there had never been a Livestrong maybe more of that money might have been donated to foundations that would actually use it to fund research.

"Using" isn't as simple as a yes-or-no question. There are many different types of PEDs, and as many ways to try to avoid positive tests. Maybe Armstrong was the fastest of a bunch of drugged-up racers, but there's no way to tell whether that's because he was the best athlete or because he had the best drugs. You can't just say everyone was on equal footing because they were all cheating. They (likely) were all cheating, of course, but the Tour should be an award for the best racing, not the best chemists.

I'm sorry, but the guy's a scumbag and it goes well beyond the fact that he doped (which pretty much everyone did in his peak years). The Livestrong Foundation was basically a huge scam that he got rich off of. Not to mention all the blackmail crap he pulled for years to anyone who'd dare speak out against him.

TLDR: the Livestrong foundation was basically an awareness campaign and made a lot of money. They aren't much different than the Susan G Komen foundation, which has been criticized greatly recently for not contributing to finding a cure.

Not just that, but Armstrong raised a lot of that money by making the argument that his foundation was funding research. And then there's LivestrongFitness, a for-profit enterprise that technically is separate from the Livestrong Foundation but uses the same marketing language and even uses the Livestrong Foundation as a way of guilt-tripping customers into supporting it.

Look at this website. It claims that it'll "donate at least $4 million to the fight against cancer."

Thank you for the link, learned a few things about the foundation, I did not know.

To answer your question, help is not always finacial. Sometimes having someone who knows what to do when your completley lost is a lot more valuable. I have charities I support and donate to them based off of what I feel is important. Livestrong is not one of those charities, but not because of anything negative I heard about the charity or Lance Armstrong. I just choose to donate to more local charities who have more of a hands on approach.

trying to crush people who spoke out, I'm tickled pink about his admission. But he'll be rehabilitated in many people's eyes; if there's anything America loves more than a hero it's a rehabilitated sinner.

He is "rehabilitated" when he returns the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in his bank accounts, which he STOLE by creating a completely false image of himself and selling that false image to advertising and the rest of us. And then by lying and lying and lying for years and years and years, getting richer off of the false image.

It's like bank fraud. Just a different way of making money by being a complete liar.

He is a LOSER of a human being. Period. End of story. Nothing to see here - just another scumbag getting rich no matter what corner he can cut, what marriage he can dump so he can go bang some petite blonde singer, etc etc.

The fact he 'beat' cancer? What, he did something extra special? No, he got fortunate. Other people don't beat it, cuz they don't have the physical body, or their doctors arent as good, or just the randomness of the Worst Disease Ever. He was fortunate he beat it off, then he figured out how to lie and take millions of dollars.

Return the cash, loser, and I will be impressed. I'm not holding my breath.

To hell with that. He should make restitution. Take some of that hundred million he's supposedly worth and donate large chunks of it to the favorite charities of Filippo Simeoni, Jonathan Vaughters, Emma O'Reilly, Andreu and Hincapie and Landis and.... I can't even keep track of all the people he's sued and/or defamed.

And then he should give them whatever tax break he gets from the donation he makes in their name.

I don't care about him one iota. It has been clear for a long time that he juiced and he always struck me as a huge douchebag. He divorced his wife and immediately started dating Sheryl Crowe, which strikes me as narcissistic and shady as hell.

I still believe it is a disgrace. I also feel he compromised his battle with cancer to step unto the forefront of a one man branding franchise. It is a win/lose scenario, you do things the right way the road to riches is acceptable. You don't, there are consequences, period.

So I'm sure White Bread America will be slapping on there yellow "Sorry About That!" bracelets any moment.

It's more than the doping. It's all of the other people's lives that he ruined. I believed this guy and he was one of my favorite athletes. Turns out he's just another scumbag more concerned about his money than anything else.

So because he put together a group that raised a lot of money to make people aware that cancer exists, rather than, ya know, putting it in the hands of scientists who could do something about it, makes him a great guy?

I'd be fine with his admission and even accept it if he hadn't professed his innocence for so long. As a current triathlete, I know he got his start as a pretty talented multi-sport guy and I do know that there's lots of triathletes who have been accused of the same thing. But he took his fame as a winner of the Tour to a much higher level. He tried to act pure and sactimonious before today...that is why I'm so pissed at him.

- I used to say to myself, "Do I think he's guilty? Yeah, I do. Does it matter? No. If you take his trophies away, who are you going to give them to? The second and third place guys? They cheated too, just not as well."

- What does bug me about Lance Armstrong more than the cheating in a sport where they all cheated, is that he was so F-ing self-righteous about his denials. if you're going to lie, just do it and quietly slink away. I will never forgive the deceitful way he grandstanded his denials as if to even question him was to doubt Mother Theresa. Slimeball.

I never mentioned anything about unalienable rights. The outlet had a story from Lance's masseuse that described in precise detail his doping regimen. They ran with the story. How is that any different than ESPN running a story citing sources? A recruiting reporter claiming that a recruit is leaning towards one school based on hearsay? The original NYTimes story last week that claimed Lance was nearing an admission?

Armstrong didn't need to sue. He could have publicly dismissed the accusations, called them a farce (as he was known to do). But he didn't. He went after people's cash, dignity, and careers and tanked them. Because he could. And he was malicious. I have no idea what this has to do with unalienable rights.

Could Lance Armstrong win such a defamation suit without committing perjury? The difference between defending yourself in a criminal case where you are guilty and bringing lawsuits based on lies is night and day.

The question of whether this is the right move to "clean his image" is irrelevant to those of us who never bought into the image in the first place. Our ability to detect bullshit is what needs serious repair. You can't go wrong invoking The Principle of the Path, which says that direction, not intention, determines destination. "I'm a good guy because I fight cancer" is the exception; his deceptive behavior has been the rule.

No dog in this "fight" but honestly that's no worse than the countless threads that contain countless statements about people of certain state of our Union or the wishing of any number of catastrophes when two detestable teams play one another.

I'm sure you're not trying to get a cheap laugh with a non-joke about a car killing innocent bystanders because you heard something on the TV about French people sucking that one time and you have the same level of intellectual creativity and overall sense of humor as a scrotum.

You probably know a lot of French people and that's why you have that opinion. I have faith.

As with many outed liars, it's the cover-up that turns out to be the more serious crime than the underlying act itself. Cycling is a weird sport to begin with, where it takes the support of a team to win, but the the champion is celebrated like as an individual feat. It's like Tom Brady saying he, and only he, is super bowl champion. Like most Americans, I don't care about cycling, or speed skating, or cricket, or a bunch of other sports Euro types get all worked up about. I couldn't care less if Lance cheated. What I do care about, is how he profited and behaved after the fact, like a total douchebag.

So you think that whole raising 500 million to fight cancer thing was a douche move? Was he perfect, no. But the guy has been far from a douche. After the USADA thing came out his first move was to protect the foundation, not himself. I think that people who share your opinion know very little about Armstrong.

Also, for those that take issue with people taking PEDs, you must have an impossible time watching pro or college football because it is pretty rampant there as well.

Most of us know the difference between right and wrong by our 5th birthday. In a sport where the rules clearly state doping is illegal, he knowingly violated the rules. If it is wrong, it is wrong, period. As in other sports and aspects of life, we need to quit feeling sorry for cheaters simply because something good came out of their cheating. Lance Armstrong epitomizes all that is wrong in our society. Cheating should never be rewarded.

I mean, it's obvious that this apology is only driven by the fact that he got caught which makes this one of the least compelling and least believable apologies in the history of apologies. He's a loser

I know my ex Katie and her father was very proud to participate in his charity bike rides before they both died of cancer. Honestly I'm glad they don't know about it.

As an aside I wonder what possible good it would've done the federations to pursue him and others for so long. They basically have a 10-15 year blank page in their history books where nobody won anything. Since everybody cheated when he was racing I feel like he's the best cyclist among equals.

The good it does is to show that cheating doesn't pay off. There was a ton of testimony linking him to PEDs. He happened to be using ones for which there wasn't a reliable test at the time, which is how he "passed" the tests. He conveniently got out of Dodge when the drug-testing standards were stepped up.

No one deserves to have won the Tour those years. That was at the height of the sport's dirtiness and vacant records should serve as a cautionary tale to riders going forward.

And he denied it for years.
Tonight he finally admitted to lying, and that the French authorities' suspicions were right all along.
That must have been difficult, but it was a foregone conclusion, and a little late.

I don't think he deserves congratulations for finally giving in to honesty and integrity.
Some will remember only the cheating and the lies. Others will remember Armstrong's good deeds and courage to fight a death sentence.
To me the Tour de France joins Major League Baseball and the Olympics in terms of things I have learned to care a whole lot less about because its all jammed packed with cheaters and substance abuse deniers.

and why these athletes ended up using EPO, testosterone, blood doping, etc., I recommend Tyler Hamilton's recent book, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

He goes into great detail as to why he did it, how he did it, and what happened (including almost dying from a transfusion reaction)- not to mention giving specific details of many of his fellow athletes including Lance. Probably one of the reasons the whole Armstrong charade came down.

I am a cyclist and an enthusiast, and am way past the "say it ain't so, Joe!" phase. The entire apple was rotten from the skin to the core.

Historically cycling has always been suspect. BEFORE there were synthetic steroids available (pre-World War II) it was openly known that the top cyclists would fortify themselves with alcohol, cocaine, pep pills and strychnine - which was believed to help "loosen" up the muscles. So is it really that shocking ("Gambling at Rick's?!, I"m shocked - Inspector Renault, Casablanca) that once steroids, blood doping, etc. became available that it wouldn't be used?

In strength and endurance sports, the advantages are obvious - but even in so-called "skill" sports, these agents allow quicker recovery and more intense training.

Most people don't benefit - so most of the high school kids shooting up or loading up, are just wasting their money, time and threatening their future health for nothing.

But for a few top percent, the small but significant improvement can be the difference between 10th place and 1st place, gold and never-was, scholarship and high-school flame out.

Because of the secrecy we don't even know how PEDs could be used medically. When the whole BALCO affair developed the real push should have been aimed not just at Barry Bonds and Victor Conte, but at their biochemists - that is why BALCO was based there - it wasn't because Bonds was in SF. It is because UCSF, Berkley (U of California) and Stanford are around the corner. It takes more than a passing knowledge of biochemistry to design drugs and know the testing protocols to create structures to evade these tests. Notice that no one was charged in that regard? Where were the labs? Who was doing their synthesis? Who was running the initial trials to figure out the dosing programs and how to evade the testing? Designer PEDs are not off the shelf products - it isn't a met-amphetamine cooking receipe that someone cooks up on a cooktop in a trailer. If the sports governing bodies are serious about PEDs, they have to start here and understand how they are being created and how they are circumventing the testing process.

Yes, I think if the so called governing bodies really want to be serious about PEDs they need to investigate how they were synthesized, tested and distributed. Catching Victor Conte and Marion Jones is like catching the corner pusher and drug crack addict - they aren't the masterminds or the cartel lab people.

I don't mean there is some secret group of "rogue chemists" on campus - but I do mean that you need to be somewhere there are recent grads who work in the biochemical and pharmaceutical industry nearby. Just like if you need to workup a gizmo which which is digital and can be computer driven, then the Silicon Valley is the place to be or if you want to do a civil aviation startup perhaps Wichita, Kansas would be a better place than downtown Ann Arbor due to the number of aeronautical engineers, project managers and other people who have civil aviation experience.

Reverse engineer the question:

If one were to try to develop a PED which could evade detection how would you do it?

1. You'd need someone familiar with the field - who knew the existing literature or what there may be. They can help guide the research and avoid deadends. Steroid synthesis and an understanding of the new field where peptide hormones which can stimulate steroid receptors or have steroid like effects is a requirement (this is why some plastic by products have steroid effects even though they don't have the classic steroid structure)

3. You'd need to have someone who has done drug clinical trials - after you have the prototype test drugs, you have to run some test trials to figure out the optimal dosing schedule - to know how close you could administer it to a potential test and how fast it clears the system.

4. You'd need a group of biochemists - some to fabricate the drug, some to work on how to optimize the drug for delivery (oral would be best, nasal absorption, topical ointment and finally injection), others to help figure out to best mask it - adding or subtracting a non-critical sidegroup or perhaps the form - could it be crystallized or aerosolized? Practical experience is important.

5. Finally, you'd need someone to act as a general project manager - to find a building to act as a lab, create a dummy front to buy supplies and materials from the science supply shops, pay the electricity bills, and keep accounts to buy the major equipment to outfit the lab, some testing could be farmed out innocously to commercial testing labs without tipping your hand, but other things have to be done "in house" - this person doesn't have to be a scientist but has to have some practical experience in running major research science projects. This person reports to whomever is backing the effort financially.

6. This project will take years to perfect with no immediate payoff - unlike a met-amphetamine lab. The backers have to have deep pockets.

So where would you look to find people who might have these skills and be underemployed?

The whole Lance Armstrong situation is not black & white. EVERYONE in the sport, and I mean EVERYONE was cheating. Not just 5 or 10 guys. EVERYONE on the pro tour was doping. Some more than others, some better than others. Lance started doping because he realized that other guys on the tour were doping and that it was humanly impossible to compete witih them. So he had to choose to basically be a nobody, or to start doping too.

That's a shitty choice. The thing is, he became the best doper in cycling history. He took it to another level and basically decided that if he was going to dope, he was going to dope 110%. He was incredibly scientific and systematic with it. And that is why he became unbeatable.

I don't really blame him for deciding to start doping. If I was faced with basically losing my livelihood because everyone else in my job was cheating I might make the same choice. That doesn't mean he was right for lying and covering it up all these years once it became obvious what was going on, but I do understand why he chose to do it in the first place.

The onus really is on the professional sports to properly test the athletes and keep the drugs out of the game so that athletes aren't faced with choices like this. An athlete shouldn't be forced to dope just to stay competitive. But cycling, much like the MLB of the late 90's early 2000's turned a completely blind eye to performance-enhancing drugs. And as a result, if you weren't using, you were completely left behind.

I'm glad he is finally coming clean about it. I wish we could know what kind of racer he would have been without the drugs.

It was HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE to ride with those guys unless you were also on drugs. You either had to take drugs too or quit the sport. It was a very sad situation, but I really don't blame the guys who said "screw it, I'm taking drugs too" because the alternative was to go sell insurance or something other than be a pro bike rider. (No offense to insurance salesmen!!)

The oldest evidence (and always considered the most credible by those who didn't have their heads in the sand) of Lance's doping is from the testimony of his friend's wife, who was there when he talked to his cancer doc and admitted to doping. This was back when he had testicular cancer. So his doping most definitely COULD have contributed to his cancer. There is no possible way to know without more information.

Another problem that I have with this whole thing is that he might drop some names to reduce his ban time. So now your gonna apologize and then throw people under the bus? I think its up to thoughs cyclists if they want to come forward and issue an apology. Once again Lance is doing what others were doing to him earlier. Still trying to salvage everything he can at everyone elses expense. Lance's is so sincere isn't it. Your a POS Lance. I hope EVERYONE sues you so much that you wont be able to afford a Huffy when its over.

There is no one left to name-drop. Practically everyone else Lance rode with has already either been busted or has admitted to doping. And everyone Lance beat has been busted too. 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place, 5th place, they ALL have been busted. It isn't like just a few guys were doing some drugs. EVERYONE WAS JUICING UP THE WAZOO.

I'm curious who the people were that trusted him in the first place. Cycling is the dirtiest sport in all of Dirtville, USA. The only thing MORE riddled with steroids and HGH are the strong-man competitions.

I think at some point it didn't really matter what he did on a bicycle. The work his foundation has done for cancer research trumps all of his lies in cycling. He cheated in a sport. He is a champion in fighting an ugly disease. We always talk about how sports take a back seat to real life issues. I'm not saying he is the perfect human being but I will give him a pass on this one.